Haunted by the Las Vegas police officers

June 10, 2014 - Paul Giannamore

I can’t get the shooting deaths of the two Las Vegas police officers off the front burner in my head this week.

The thought that these two young men, with wives and families, were randomly targeted by a couple of losers so far out on the extreme that even the extremists tossed them to the curb just sickens me.

I still haven’t seen the national outpouring to start college funds for these men’s children that I saw in the replace Rocko the police dog movement, or the fund that sprang up around the hero of the Seattle college campus shootings. There are a number of local efforts already in Las Vegas, but a national effort might make a statement for the good.

And I haven’t really heard the gunners chime in yet, though surely the macho view of those who weren't there (and that total would include everyone still alive in the U.S.) is that if the guy in the Wal-Mart had been faster on the draw and shot first, he’d be alive and the day would have been saved. I hope I never hear that. He tried and died, and that’s a sad turn for a guy who just went to Wal-Mart.

The cops were eating lunch at a pizza restaurant. They were just eating lunch.

And these crazy people decided it was time to kill some police officers.

Now, yelling “This is the start of the revolution” when cold-blooded killing a pair of police officers makes absolutely no statement at all when no one knows what the deuce you are talking about. Losers. Not only were they wrong-headed, they failed to let the rest of the world in on why they were willing to be so evil. They ended the lives of two men doing their jobs standing in the way between nuts like those two and just regular law-abiding folks.

They pinned a note about starting the revolution on one officer and left a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag and a Nazi flag at the scene.

Proof positive that extremism can lead to ultra-extremism.

For those of you who think all Muslims are extremists and all Amurricans can do no wrong, beware that ideologies can always be stood on their head by the twisted mind and turned with murderous intent.

Las Vegas Police Officers Igor Soldo and Alyn Beck are the unfortunate latest casualties of a nation going mad, where the priorities are never to work with one another, to always poke at the extremes to assure there is no possibility for compromise, to feed the twisted and then act surprised by the hatred boiling away under the surface.

It was gratifying to me to see the pictures of people hugging Las Vegas officers during a vigil. Maybe we’re not entirely lost when there are still people who recognize what good police officers do for the world.

Still, I’d love to see a nationwide effort to take care of their families, and the family of the man who tried to do the right thing and died for his effort.